the gungans were very jamacian, right down the the body language (imo). Watto seemed to me to be the italian-based character.
time for my 2 cents.
are we really so sensitive that we can't accept subtle (so much so that they might be coincidental) allusions to racial archetypes in our movies? they weren't even derogatory.. except for possibly the Trade Federation aliens, but the chinese->tibetan allegory pointed out above is perfectly valid no matter how PC you are. so what if the gungans are like jamacains? so what if watto is like an italian gangster? they're obviously not trying to turn us racist.. it's time this society starts realizing that covering one's eyes is not a cure for racism any more than cutting one's hand off is a cure for a hangnail.
"I liked Goodfellas, but why did they have to make all the gangsters Italian? I thought that was kinda racist.."
i see. yeah, 100 people pitching in a little bit is a reasonable estimate (which Woodward totally fell short of, which is probably why we lost). between 100 residents you could put together a pound of hair pretty easily (#98).
did they try to get us to sleep on the roadtrip? i don't know.. twice we'd get to a city at 5 am and our first item on the agenda was a place that opened at 8 am, so we caught a few Z's in vain then. but i'm not sure that was intentional.. we didn't follow the planned agenda that well, but we kicked ass anyway.:)
the scavhunt must've been quite a different beast before altavista. i don't know -how- i'd have been able to find all the roadtrip items without it.. i suppose i'd get on the horn right at 8 am and start pestering various information numbers. ech. i much prefer the more efficient method that's devoid of human contact.:)
the sweet-talkers earn an impressive number of points, it's certain.. well, them along with the covert ops team (their duties are interchangable with alarming frequency). that's where the sweetest plums lie.. ah, carting a vending machine into Ida Noyes hall was as satisfying as seeing the other teams' eyes bug out.:)
This is interesting to hear. Maybe Woodward just doesn't get it.:) I found the low-tech rather romantic (although if it weren't for AltaVista, we'd probably STILL be on the roadtrip). Woodward's turnout was remarkably low (we had maybe 30 dedicated people, tops), but I didn't see anyone but the Shoreland with a presence to totally dominate ours.
I'm curious as to which team you were on with 125 people. Maybe it's true that ScavHunt has been waning over the last few years.. fortunately, it's very far from burning out.
I'd disagree about your 'more fatiguing road trips' point. This road trip was, according to the 3rd- and 2nd-years who I accompanied, the biggest one in years. We had about 55 total items to collect, and the route was Chicago->Milwaukee->Green Bay->Mackinaw->Toronto->Detroit->Chicago, with several stops in between (such as Waldo). We stopped to sleep for 4 hours, -max-, and that was with two drivers. We almost killed each other the last day...
Yes, we had a couple of sweet-talkers.. that's how we got a vending machine, several hundred hub caps, our Resident Master to serenade us with NWA, etc etc etc. The 'covert' team didn't have that much to do this year mostly because of the legal troubles last year (Hitchcock ratted Woodward out.. the judges do not shine on them).. nonetheless, the official Ward T-shirt is emblazoned with the slogan 'DON'T ARREST ME'---although the reaction to that in the great white north made me think it was less than effective.:)
--neil, who left Casino Rama up five Canadian bucks
I'd leave this article alone if it wasn't for the high score.. as is, I can't resist.
100 people?! a LAN and 'database technology'?! what do you think this place is? northwestern? MIT? hell no! as far as that manpower, the winning team (Burton-Judson) had less dedicated members than you're saying need to stay up for 3 days, and nobody but the Shoreland even came CLOSE to having 100.. and the Shoreland got third!
I can only speak for my own team, but all WE had was a box of index cards, a whole lot of copies of the list, and a dozen people with FEVERISH dedication. The Ward, as the score list will testify, wasn't exactly the pinnacle of organization, but that was the paradigm we used for our roadtrip team, which whomped the asses of the other roadtrip teams (and the nation of Canada;). It only took two people to arrange a real live vending machines which sold Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Jolt Cola, and condoms. Division of labor? Minimal! The whole point of the ScavHunt is that it's FUN, it's HARD, and it's CRAZY.. and EVERYONE GETS WET..
Perhaps you've had contact with BJ and have learned of their 24-hour-manned internal database; I wouldn't know. But I'd wager they were closer to 24-hour-manned battle-scarred checklists and boxes of hastily scrawled index cards.
(By the way, Waldo is in Wisconsin, between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Its population is in the 400s. And it doesn't look it.:)
-- neil, still recovering from roadtrip (and from eating a few dozen packets of ramen flavoring)
renicing it doesn't make it take less than 90% CPU if i'm not using more than 10% CPU anyway. i think what he means is 'i'm too stupid to write streamlined code, so just renice it and it won't get in the way of anything important.' hopefully there will be enough people who don't care to run servers, because i ain't gonna be running one.
>[...]to somehow think it's bad for Open Source software because it doesn't click for you[...]
hold the phones there. i didn't say that at all, and i don't see how you could've rationally determined that from what i said. what i did say is that i don't personally like it and i don't see why it's now becoming synonymous with open source. i can certainly see how people -could- be turned away from the whole linux shebang by seeing it, by way of this comic strip, patting itself on the back (which is most definitely how the linux community (whatever that is) seems to the external observer reading UF, mark my words)... but i didn't say that.:)
another thing i pointed out is that it really -doesn't- try to find funny things in the linux community, other than how hilarious it is that linux and its followers are so damned much cooler than microsoft, etc. i guess what i'm saying is that i don't agree with a sense of fraternity being part of software, and UF is just a facet of this.
i've been running a q3 dedicated server in my spare CPU time since the first test came out.. but i've noticed that on the new test, it takes about 85-90% CPU even when nobody is connected. has anyone else noticed this? does anyone know why?
Congratulations, you've totally missed my point. I guess I didn't use the right phrase.. I don't see O'Reilly as 'no-nonsense,' really, but its lightness is in a VERY different vein than UF's. I won't bother arguing over whether UF is friendly or not---opinions on that are moot. I will, however, argue (as I did in my previous post) that the humor is largely opinion-based, and those opinions are opinions which O'Reilly hasn't been formally attached with before.
You don't know me---I have a sense of humor about my operating system. In fact, that's something which UF (I don't read it all that often but I've skimmed most of the archives) seems to lack. I don't see jokes about how great Linux is as being humor about my operating system. And anything anti-Linux in it is more like praise through faint criticism: 'Look, our obviously ignorant boss doesn't trust Linux!' 'We, the protagonists, are such Linux geeks that it interferes with our personal lives! but we're still cool!' This, compared with the virtual slander against Microsoft (obligatory disclaimer: I don't do Windows).. it makes Dilbert look anti-engineer by comparison.
... to stay up-to-date with a useful, adaptable, free operating system without giving oneself over to the insipid world of the 'Linux community,' 'it's cool to be a geek,' 'Linux on every desktop,' 'Bill $ux...' and at the center of it all, the universal rallying point for this world that runs Linux because it's 'hip,' this pandering, ridiculous comic strip. O'Reilly was seemingly one of the last frontiers---no nonsense *NIX information, information without having to enter a world of Microsoft mockery, Quake in every geek's dreams, and hip references to sci-fi movies. I guess O'Reilly knows which way the tide has turned. But it's just depressing, you know.
Stupid question, maybe, but I can't get xanim to play this MPEG (or many other mpegs like it). I get thousands of errors: MPG_UNK CODE: e0 and when it finally plays there's no sound and it goes at 1 or 2 fps. Do I have the wrong version? Need flags? Can't play this kind of MPEG? what?
Well, I found these benchmarks a bit untrustworthy, so I decided to get my hands on a couple of test systems and do my own benchmarks. Here are the results:
As you can see, these results clearly and conclusively show the superiority of the K7 over the Pentium III. I hope this puts an end to this Register nonsense once and for all!
it's kludgy as hell and it's written in perl, but it -does- ping a realtime list of public q3a servers for you. check it out: http://rebrane.k-r4d.com/~rebrane/lin uxspy.pl make sure to edit the constants in the top of the file (accepting command line arguments would be too nonkludgy).
i noticed the same pops, whistles, and other miscellaneous mp3 artifacts, and was similarly annoyed---when listening to the song with mpg123. but then i popped it into freeamp and there's only a slight hiss, barely noticable. freeamp is a better player anyway, so there you go.:) -- neil
So let me get this straight. A politician grabs hold of a term which has recently become a pretty major buzzword.. grossly misuses it in a way that your average layman won't notice, but will rather be impressed by.. and you guys are -surprised-? I'm sorry to say that it happens every day.. just not, so often, to our SIG. I suppose we should consider ourself lucky that we finally have politicians actively misrepresenting us.:)
their resources helping us? of course not? the united states would never consider taking resources -- like, for instance, oil -- in exchange for foreign aid, military defense, or other such favoritism! it's unheard of.
yeah! and furthermore, what's so illegal about shooting someone? it's nothing but making a bullet publically available to them (albiet under their skin)! think about it.
-- neil
Finally, some useful information today ...
on
Important new RFCs
·
· Score: 1
this is the funniest post i've read all day. here's hoping it was sarcastic.
Slashdot Mirror
time for my 2 cents.
are we really so sensitive that we can't accept subtle (so much so that they might be coincidental) allusions to racial archetypes in our movies? they weren't even derogatory.. except for possibly the Trade Federation aliens, but the chinese->tibetan allegory pointed out above is perfectly valid no matter how PC you are. so what if the gungans are like jamacains? so what if watto is like an italian gangster? they're obviously not trying to turn us racist.. it's time this society starts realizing that covering one's eyes is not a cure for racism any more than cutting one's hand off is a cure for a hangnail.
"I liked Goodfellas, but why did they have to make all the gangsters Italian? I thought that was kinda racist.."
pfah.
--neil
did they try to get us to sleep on the roadtrip? i don't know.. twice we'd get to a city at 5 am and our first item on the agenda was a place that opened at 8 am, so we caught a few Z's in vain then. but i'm not sure that was intentional.. we didn't follow the planned agenda that well, but we kicked ass anyway. :)
the scavhunt must've been quite a different beast before altavista. i don't know -how- i'd have been able to find all the roadtrip items without it.. i suppose i'd get on the horn right at 8 am and start pestering various information numbers. ech. i much prefer the more efficient method that's devoid of human contact. :)
the sweet-talkers earn an impressive number of points, it's certain.. well, them along with the covert ops team (their duties are interchangable with alarming frequency). that's where the sweetest plums lie.. ah, carting a vending machine into Ida Noyes hall was as satisfying as seeing the other teams' eyes bug out. :)
--neil
I'm curious as to which team you were on with 125 people. Maybe it's true that ScavHunt has been waning over the last few years.. fortunately, it's very far from burning out.
I'd disagree about your 'more fatiguing road trips' point. This road trip was, according to the 3rd- and 2nd-years who I accompanied, the biggest one in years. We had about 55 total items to collect, and the route was Chicago->Milwaukee->Green Bay->Mackinaw->Toronto->Detroit->Chicago, with several stops in between (such as Waldo). We stopped to sleep for 4 hours, -max-, and that was with two drivers. We almost killed each other the last day...
Yes, we had a couple of sweet-talkers.. that's how we got a vending machine, several hundred hub caps, our Resident Master to serenade us with NWA, etc etc etc. The 'covert' team didn't have that much to do this year mostly because of the legal troubles last year (Hitchcock ratted Woodward out.. the judges do not shine on them).. nonetheless, the official Ward T-shirt is emblazoned with the slogan 'DON'T ARREST ME'---although the reaction to that in the great white north made me think it was less than effective. :)
--neil, who left Casino Rama up five Canadian bucks
100 people?! a LAN and 'database technology'?! what do you think this place is? northwestern? MIT? hell no! as far as that manpower, the winning team (Burton-Judson) had less dedicated members than you're saying need to stay up for 3 days, and nobody but the Shoreland even came CLOSE to having 100.. and the Shoreland got third!
I can only speak for my own team, but all WE had was a box of index cards, a whole lot of copies of the list, and a dozen people with FEVERISH dedication. The Ward, as the score list will testify, wasn't exactly the pinnacle of organization, but that was the paradigm we used for our roadtrip team, which whomped the asses of the other roadtrip teams (and the nation of Canada ;). It only took two people to arrange a real live vending machines which sold Flamin' Hot Cheetos, Jolt Cola, and condoms. Division of labor? Minimal! The whole point of the ScavHunt is that it's FUN, it's HARD, and it's CRAZY.. and EVERYONE GETS WET..
Perhaps you've had contact with BJ and have learned of their 24-hour-manned internal database; I wouldn't know. But I'd wager they were closer to 24-hour-manned battle-scarred checklists and boxes of hastily scrawled index cards.
(By the way, Waldo is in Wisconsin, between Milwaukee and Green Bay. Its population is in the 400s. And it doesn't look it. :)
-- neil, still recovering from roadtrip (and from eating a few dozen packets of ramen flavoring)
My team only got an e-mail from them; and slashdot is too little too late. *sigh*
--neil, representative of the Ward's roadtrip team
ObScavHunt: for a few pictures, see my scant few digital images of the roadtrip and a few pictures from an observer.
--neil
hold the phones there. i didn't say that at all, and i don't see how you could've rationally determined that from what i said. what i did say is that i don't personally like it and i don't see why it's now becoming synonymous with open source. i can certainly see how people -could- be turned away from the whole linux shebang by seeing it, by way of this comic strip, patting itself on the back (which is most definitely how the linux community (whatever that is) seems to the external observer reading UF, mark my words)... but i didn't say that. :)
another thing i pointed out is that it really -doesn't- try to find funny things in the linux community, other than how hilarious it is that linux and its followers are so damned much cooler than microsoft, etc. i guess what i'm saying is that i don't agree with a sense of fraternity being part of software, and UF is just a facet of this.
--neil
oops.
:s/friendly/funny/
You don't know me---I have a sense of humor about my operating system. In fact, that's something which UF (I don't read it all that often but I've skimmed most of the archives) seems to lack. I don't see jokes about how great Linux is as being humor about my operating system. And anything anti-Linux in it is more like praise through faint criticism: 'Look, our obviously ignorant boss doesn't trust Linux!' 'We, the protagonists, are such Linux geeks that it interferes with our personal lives! but we're still cool!' This, compared with the virtual slander against Microsoft (obligatory disclaimer: I don't do Windows).. it makes Dilbert look anti-engineer by comparison.
MPG_UNK CODE: e0
and when it finally plays there's no sound and it goes at 1 or 2 fps. Do I have the wrong version? Need flags? Can't play this kind of MPEG? what?
... but if the hard disk doesn't EXIST, then that's a fairly good barometer for whether or not the article is made up, obviously enough. -- neil
Well, I found these benchmarks a bit untrustworthy, so I decided to get my hands on a couple of test systems and do my own benchmarks. Here are the results:
K7-600 vs PIII-600
all peripherals identical
RESULTS:
rebrane niftymark 3000 (integer operation test, MMX register not included)
- PIII: 3.6
- K7: 1,953,234
rebrane FPUmark 3000 (FPU operation test, 3DNOW register not included)
- PIII: 0.5
- K7: 5,230,193,294
As you can see, these results clearly and conclusively show the superiority of the K7 over the Pentium III. I hope this puts an end to this Register nonsense once and for all!
-- neil
http://rebrane.k-r4d.com/~rebrane/lin uxspy.pl
make sure to edit the constants in the top of the file (accepting command line arguments would be too nonkludgy).
i noticed the same pops, whistles, and other miscellaneous mp3 artifacts, and was similarly annoyed---when listening to the song with mpg123. but then i popped it into freeamp and there's only a slight hiss, barely noticable. freeamp is a better player anyway, so there you go. :) -- neil
and
irony is bliss.
hooray for protecting only popular opinions! you're a true american, buddy!
--neil
So let me get this straight. A politician grabs hold of a term which has recently become a pretty major buzzword.. grossly misuses it in a way that your average layman won't notice, but will rather be impressed by.. and you guys are -surprised-? :)
I'm sorry to say that it happens every day.. just not, so often, to our SIG. I suppose we should consider ourself lucky that we finally have politicians actively misrepresenting us.
-- neil
>Even Sengen knows it's a joke, see the "april-one-nineteen-ninety-nine dept" line...
of COURSE! so THAT'S why he gave it tthe humor icon! where would i be without the quick-witted analysis of slashdot commenters?
--neil
My cat's breath smells like cat food.
http://www.sfbg.com/News/31/33/Opinions
it's an opinion piece written by Tom Tomorrow, of This Modern World fame. quite insightful.
-neil
their resources helping us? of course not? the united states would never consider taking resources -- like, for instance, oil -- in exchange for foreign aid, military defense, or other such favoritism! it's unheard of.
-n
think about it.
-- neil
this is the funniest post i've read all day. here's hoping it was sarcastic.
-- neil